Perfect

I’m expected to always be perfect.

From the very moment I was born, I wasn’t allowed to do anything else but study. I would get severely scolded for if I didn’t do the assessment books my father wanted me to do. For the longest time possible, I thought my sole purpose in life was to study and get good grades, hell, I started learning algebra at the age of 9. Then, I started being called the “goody 2 shoes” who had no childhood.

Yet, my parents blamed me for turning rebellious, for starting to smoke. Why didn’t they ask themselves that question? I wasn’t even allowed to play in a ball pit at the age of 8.

Up till today, I can’t cough at home without them blaming me for smoking too much. Hence, I can’t even bring myself to tell them that I’m sick, in fear that they would turn the situation around and blamed me instead.

I can’t tell them that I have a migraine in fear of them blaming me for sleeping late, or using my phone too often, but in fact, their only daughter is just too stressed out from school.

I’m trapped at home, I can’t do anything without being treated as if I’m a failure or a disappointment. Yet, when I go out, they say that the only thing I know how to do is smoke and hang out with wrong company and that I’m treating my house like a hotel. (ikr, what a typical Asian parent thing to say).

I’m expected to be their perfect little golden daughter, that any single little thing that I do wrong, they act like the world is ending. I always get scolded for not being at home often, but what for, if there’s so many things I’m disallowed to do at home.

I always get blamed. Whenever I try to tell them about whatever struggles I’m going through, they always blame me, they always say that I’m at fault, and that I’m just being petty, unreasonable, hateful. And after all this, they still have the audacity to say that I don’t ever tell them things. But what for, if this is the type of respond I’ll receive.

I have this indescribable fear of failure because I feel the need to be perfect. People say that I cry too often, or that I’m too sensitive, emotional, whatever. And yes, I agree, I AM. But I cry not because I want to, it’s because it my way of flushing away whatever negative emotion that I’m feeling. When I’m expected to be perfect, this meant that I couldn’t talk back to people when I felt sad or hurt or angry, I couldn’t defend myself, I had to smile and move on, I had to be happy because that’s what “perfect” looks like.

Yet when I try so hard to be perfect, no one is ever proud of me. I always try my best to help others, to make them happy. Because I simply want someone to be proud of me. I didn’t go into my desired field of study because of my parents, I try to get good grades because of my parents, I do every fucking thing with their best interest in mind. Yet, they would never be satisfied with anything that I do, and that makes me feel like I’m an even bigger failure and disappointment. So who the hell am I trying to be perfect for. Who the fuck am I even kidding, its myself.